While I Lay Not Sleeping
While I'm writing this novella I've been using phrases from hymns and Bible verses as chapter headers. I wasn't really sure why, until about halfway into it, and then I figured it out. But one of the header lines was 'Morning comes, but also night" from Isaiah 21:12. I was contemplating that as I lay awake in the night. We often think of the other phrase 'joy cometh in the morning' as being something to look forward to - and it is. There is something deeply wonderful about watching the sun rise on a new day. But in order to fully appreciate that day, and the joy potential in it, we first need the night. We need the sleep that night implies.
Methought I heard a voice cry, “Sleep no more!
Macbeth does murder sleep”—the innocent sleep,
Sleep that knits up the raveled sleave of care,
The death of each day’s life, sore labor’s bath,
Balm of hurt minds, great nature’s second course,
Chief nourisher in life’s feast.
--Macbeth, Act 2, scene 2
Shakespeare's enduring quality is that he puts his thumb right on the spot, and then digs in a little. Sometimes, depending on the scene, it's more a tickle. But here in Macbeth he hits a pain point that makes humanity flinch and wriggle away a little. Sleep is a balm, and a necessary thing, and losing sleep means pain and misery. It's not only literature and legend, though, science has a lot to say about our human need for sleep.
"Chronic restriction of sleep periods to 4 h or 6 h per night over 14 consecutive days resulted in significant cumulative, dose-dependent deficits in cognitive performance on all tasks." (1)
"Laboratory and epidemiological studies suggest that sleep loss may play a role in the increased prevalence of diabetes and/or obesity." (2)
"the complete absence of sleep was fatal in a few days, pointing out that the most severe lesions occurred in the brain." (3)
Forced sleep deprivation is a form of torture, leading to psychosis, altered mental and physical state, and when prolonged, to death. Even the loss of a few hours of sleep a night can possibly alter our metabolism in ways that lead to chronic diseases. Sleep doesn't just 'knit up care' it can literally heal our bodies. Without sufficient sleep, we are unable to perform at our jobs. As a parent of babies and even toddlers, I remember ruefully the days when all I could manage was to take care of them, my world shrinking to the home because I simply could not cope with more than what was strictly necessary. I never had enough sleep. It left a mark on me.
Now, I usually need, and get, my eight hours a night. Different individuals require differing amounts of sleep. Some can function just fine on 7-8. Teenagers might need closer to 10-12, as their bodies and brains are developing and require so much resources in doing so that the mind puts them into a sort of hibernation to allow the growth. What about too much sleep? Well, excessive daytime sleepiness can indicate an underlying pathology, like apnea or narcolepsy. But it is also one of the negative impacts on shift workers, who move from day sleep to night sleep over the course of weeks - prolonged shift work has a terrible health impact on the worker, in sleep disruption and other health problems. Oddly, it seems that setting one schedule, or the other, is fine - graveyard shift workers with that consistent schedule do much better than a swinging schedule.
All of this, simply to say... I didn't sleep well. I woke up groggy, grumpy, and feeling like I'd been drug through the wringer backward. But then, as I was driving to work, the sun rising was glorious. I took the time to take pictures, and if I can make it work, a little video to show how the clouds were moving and playing with the light of the rising sun. Joy came with the dawn. And there is the promise of night, at the end of a long and tiring day, so that I may lay down and sleep deeply and heal, ready for another day. I am looking forward to night.
1. Hans P.A. Van Dongen, Greg Maislin, Janet M. Mullington, David F. Dinges; The Cumulative Cost of Additional Wakefulness: Dose-Response Effects on Neurobehavioral Functions and Sleep Physiology From Chronic Sleep Restriction and Total Sleep Deprivation, Sleep, Volume 26, Issue 2, 1 March 2003, Pages 117–126, https://doi.org/10.1093/sleep/26.2.117
2. Kristen L. Knutson, PhD,1 Karine Spiegel, PhD,2 Plamen Penev, MD, PhD,1 and Eve Van Cauter, PhD; The Metabolic Consequences of Sleep Deprivation, Sleep Med Rev. 2007 Jun; 11(3): 163–178. Published online 2007 Apr 17. doi: 10.1016/j.smrv.2007.01.002
3. Marina Bentivoglio, Gigliola Grassi-Zucconi; The Pioneering Experimental Studies on Sleep Deprivation, Sleep, Volume 20, Issue 7, 1 July 1997, Pages 570–576, https://doi.org/10.1093/sleep/20.7.570